One Last Choice
by Motherflipping Oak
Summary: After a bloodbath of a tournament, a trainer finally comes to the end of their journey. One-shot inspired by Nuzlocke challenges.


There's always a choice, they said.

They said I could choose not to participate, but if I did, my life would be forfeit.

They said I could refuse to accept the pokémon assigned to me, a tiny aron that eyed me suspiciously, but if I did, it would be killed.

They said I could try running away during the tournament any time I wanted to, but the end result would be the same.

There's always a choice.

As long as the wrong choice looks good on the blooper reel, that is.

* * *

I huddled closer to the rough stone wall behind me, seeking some shelter from a sudden gust of wind. Weather could be very temperamental in early April, and sitting halfway up the stairs to the champion's plateau on this artificial mountain didn't exactly help.

It was the seventeenth tournament, and it was a huge media spectacle with constant coverage on twelve different channels, countless bets taken, and endless interviews with experts, celebrities and those former participants who weren't prone to start weeping hysterically at the drop of the hat.

I had spent the bulk of my childhood hoping the tournament would fall out of favour before my tenth birthday, before I would become one of the hollow-eyed teens from the slums repeating their tales of woe, or better yet, a corpse. If anything, it had grown more popular.

The goal of the tournament was simple: defeat all those trainers whose eyes you meet. Reach the champion's plateau. Defeat the champion. Become the new reigning champion, and defend your title until the end of the tournament. Don't lose.

Each of us were given a starter pokémon, and a limited number of pokéballs to catch more. If all your pokémon died, you were out. If you broke any of the countless rules, you were out, and likely dead too. And if you wanted to stay in, by the end of it all your pokémon would have slaughtered innumerable others at your behest.

Of course, there were always a few kids who couldn't wait to participate: the most wretched hoping for a better life, as well as those born without empathy. More common were those who just stopped caring at some point of the tournament, bonding so strongly with their pokémon they did anything to get out with them intact, taking their abilities as far as they could and either crushing the champion or, more shrewdly, finding a way to dally without looking bad and surviving to the end of the tournament without ever challenging the champion.

Many others just weren't cut out for the tournament: they'd panic, suffer from breakdowns, or even commit suicide right off the bat. Those who mustered onwards often lost without winning a single battle. They were probably the lucky ones: losing at the tournament was only a death sentence to the pokémon and those participants who broke the rules.

The problem with the rules was that above all else, we had to entertain the audience. If you were reluctant, obviously avoiding battles, obviously trying to get out, not trying hard enough, or even just competent but boring, more often than not you'd find yourself being punished. We're rarely give the benefit of doubt. The goriest results were often televised to much acclaim. Nothing is more enjoyable to the ruling classes than to see the lowest of the low face death or mutilation.

Survivors are usually returned to whatever reform school or slum they were first picked up from, to live their lives if they still could. A couple of the audience's favourites sometimes receive gifts, small by their standards, life-changing by ours. Others are held back and made reparticipate in the next tournament, a fate worse than any punishment. The reigning champion and the audience's top 3 contestants, however, will spend the rest of their life in relative luxury, basking in fame. And there are always those who think the reward is worth the carnage.

Most of us, however, just want to make it through until the end without deaths on our conscience. Problem is, it's never an option.

I looked around. The landing seemed sturdy enough, so I summoned Ferra: a hulking monstrosity, a living mountain of steel, with razor-sharp claws and a maw powerful enough to snap bones in half. A beast with hundreds of kills under its belt. And my dearest and only companion.

I beckoned Ferra to lower its head and stroked its forehead plate. It wasn't Ferra who had killed all those other pokémon, ones just as desperate to survive as it was. The blood was on my hands.

Caring about your pokémon is poison. It makes you more desperate, more willing to kill other pokémon, more prone to breakdowns when they die. Of course, the organisers did all they could to encourage us to care about them, starting from forcing us to name them. And in the end, despite knowing how unwise it was, I couldn't help but care about Ferra. I had knowingly fallen into the trap.

The sound of bells rang from a nearby speaker affixed to the stone wall, far too high for me to reach it. A pleasant voice with a metallic tinge to it followed to give an announcement.

_"The competition will end in one hour. The following participants will be disqualified if they are not to take action. 156, 158, 212..."_

"Disqualified." Yeah, sure. We all knew what that meant, and so did the audience. What was even the point of the euphemism? Everybody knew you were actually saying that if the people listed didn't make an effort they'd be lined up and executed after the tournament ended.

I rubbed my neck. Would my number be on the list? Probably, since I had stumbled so close to the champion without actually challenging them, but maybe, just maybe, getting there had been enough...

_"433, 448, 449..."_

I sighed. Well, it had been a pie in the sky dream anyway.

So, my options. I could sit there twiddling my thumbs for another hour and let them shoot me in the stomach. I don't know what they'd do to Ferra, but it wouldn't be pleasant.

I wouldn't surrender us to them now, not after everything we'd been through.

I could commit suicide. Surely I was less than an hour's walk away from the nearest lake, I could just go there and drown myself. Heck, I could just throw myself off the stairs, it'd probably do the trick. But again, what would happen to Ferra?

Finally, I could climb up and challenge the champion. If nothing else, doing so would give Ferra a shot at life. Yet at the same time, I would also be following the path the organisers had lain in front of me.

But after all this time, does it even matter what I choose?

* * *

I had refused to capture any pokémon for my team, relying only on Ferra. By almost all accounts, it had been a terrible move. As an aron, Ferra had two crippling weaknesses, and certainly could have used other pokémon as backup. It would have saved me several near heart attacks, the most recent but three days ago, when a busy trainer had spooked me out of my hiding place and sicced his hitmonlee on me. It had come down to luck, like so many battles before it: the hitmonlee screwed up its jump kick twice in a row, just enough for Ferra to grab it in its maw and crush it.

Even that memory no longer stung. I still feel guilt, but in a form in which I can ignore it. I avoided fights whenever I could, and when I couldn't, I did what I had to do to ensure Ferra's survival. Everyone left in the game right now was like that: all the others, many kids no doubt more noble - or at least, far more unlucky - than me, had been long since disqualified.

Truly, I have been lucky, right from the very beginning. While I hadn't been granted the strongest starter imaginable, at least it was a viable one. There was a trainer or two in every starting batch given pokémon who could barely stand up, let alone attack. Apparently, this was considered hilarious by the audience.

My luck continued with my starting batch. Of the twenty-five people in my starting location, not one had ground or fighting-type pokémon. Back then, I didn't consider it luck. I didn't want to fight anyone if I could avoid it. No-one in our batch did. As soon as the gong was sounded, our eyes hit the ground and we began shuffling off to the nearest recovery area, fully intent on avoiding confrontation for as long as possible.

Well, all of us except for one. There's always a bad apple in a bunch, I suppose. His starter was a pikachu, and he went and yanked everyone he could catch, forcing them to look him in the eye.

As the rest of us ran, I accidentally clapped my eyes with another trainer. The look of terror on her face no doubt mirrored mine.

What choice did I have? As soon as your eyes meet, you're doomed. The sensor they place on your brow ensures that you can't even pretend you didn't do it.

She had started with an oddish, and there was nothing I could do beyond prolonging the battle for as long as I could, constantly choosing defensive moves over attacks.

"Just do it."

"What?" And for the first time, I actually looked at her. She was tiny in stature, more like an eight-year-old rather than a ten-year-old, with long braided hair and an angular face. Her eyes bore on me, full of fire.

"Just do it. Attack. There's no point in dawdling."

I averted my eyes from her and looked at the oddish. "I don't want to kill it."

The trainer bit her lip. "It's going to die anyway. Just let it out of its misery." She jutted her chin out. "If you really care, kill it so it doesn't have to suffer."

So I did.

The memory of the tiny oddish lying on the grass, seemingly unharmed save for a few bruises, never again to open its eyes, will never cease to haunt me.

The trainer pocketed her now empty pokéball, handed me her number token, and turned around, walking away. The bully tried to grab her, too busy with his own duels to notice ours, but she slapped his hand away and kept her stride, her chin held up high. She soon joined the stream of people who vanished into the defeat zone, and that was the last time I saw her.

I find myself often thinking about her. I hope she's okay.

* * *

I slowly climbed the steps towards the plateau. There was still a long way to go, and each step felt like another nail in my coffin. Funny how my luck had ran out mere hours before the end.

Yes, Fortune had smiled upon me, yet I hadn't been bold. If anything, I had done my best to take the routes less taken, to be interesting without engaging in battles; adventuring, exploring caves, spending quality time with Ferra, stuff like that. After a certain point, after the thought of losing Ferra had become unbearable, I even considered capturing some more pokémon for my team, and scoured the place looking for a perfect partner in crime for us. Unfortunately, to accommodate for numerous different starting areas, all catchable pokémon were weak at best, useless at worst. There were rumours of much stronger pokémon hidden in secluded locations again this year, but it that was true, I must have been beaten to the punch, since I never saw as much as a beak or tail of anything worth training so late into the game during all my spelunking and adventuring.

As much as I had avoided conflict, however, didn't mean I had scraped by with my conscience clean, as the string of plastic tokens hung around my belt attested to. While I probably ran into less of my peers than the average contestant, I had still encountered more than my share, and with both tactics and sheer dumb luck had always come out on top. Many of the trainers had employed the same strategy as mine, lurking around, exploring the surroundings rather than walking up the main routes. Others, on the other hand, were down there specially to hunt down people like me, pegging us as weaklings and easy prey. Many of my peers no doubt succumbed to them just like they succumbed to each other. And yet, here I stood, somehow unscathed save for the burgeoning burden weighting down on my conscience.

Yet, what choice did I have?

Adventuring, by the way, wasn't all bad. Sometimes I could even forget my fear of bumping into another trainer, and fully embrace the happiness that exploring this artificial dream of wonder was. They really had gone all out designing the place, and even though it's mostly for the audience's benefit, I do have to admire some of their creations. Like the crystal lair in the middle of a dank cave, filled from floor to roof with gorgeous crystal flowers, blue, pink, and lilac, with mirror-like walls reflecting every one of them in the light of my torch ad infinitum. There was another cave on the southern edge of our territory, in which waterfalls streamed upwards and the air was filled with dancing specks of light. The mountains had hidden statues standing on them, ranging for a foot tall to colossal monuments, each exquisitely crafted. In the eastern jungle, there were cottages masquerading as enormous trees, with grass floors and gentle green light being filtered through the leaf ceiling.

And everywhere, there were treasures to be found: huge seashells, fossils, pearls, curious stones, scales, various artifacts of a time long past. Or at least imitations of such. Real or not, I treasured every find. They gave me a purpose, and allowed me to forget where I was and why, even if only for a moment.

And then, in an instant I would curse until the end of my days, I had stumbled across the plateau what was the committee thinking when it all but hid the champion's location deep in the wilderness? Where did the main route even lead to? Even from this height, I could barely see parts of a road, going in the wrong direction. Was this some sort of a joke? Did they laugh their collective asses of as they hid the champion area in such an obscure place way that to find it, you either had to scour the whole game area or stumble across it by accident. And while I couldn't go back down mainly because time was running out, to those who had ended up here by accident earlier into the tournament had another obstacle to contend with: the lone bridge that let to the stairs was a drawbridge, and while it was kept down for now, it had no doubt been raised several times to taunt and roadblock hapless children. And this was after making their way through a gruelling, murky cave, with floors covered in icy cold water. No doubt all of this was gut-bustingly hilarious to the people at home.

I had now reached the final step. With a silent sigh, I climbed it, and was met with sudden sunlight and a field of flowers. Flowers, of all colours and sizes, fluttering gently in the breeze, amidst vibrant green tufts of grass. I could even make out the distant cry of a pidgeot, an effect slightly marred when I realised it came from yet another speaker.

And in the middle of this tiny field was a throne made of stone. Barely a throne, as it was obviously kid-sized, but still: it had carvings in an ancient that I didn't recognise, and an elaborate picture of Arceus above the champion. And a child sat on the throne; the child that had conquered all that was to be conquered, and reigned undefeated. The champion.

She stood up when she saw me, and took a few steps forward. Her skin was dark, her hair cropped short, and she was wearing the same red and blue jumpsuit we all wore. Only the red bandana on her head with a shining emblem marked her as something special...that, and the calm, almost regal way she was gazing at me. She looked down and picked up her string of tokens from the side the throne. It was at least three times longer than mine, and a quick glance at her belt told me she had five pokéballs.

I had already lost.

The champion inspected me the same way I inspected her, and I half expected her to smirk, seeing my lone pokémon and tiny headcount. However, not a single muscle twitched on her face as I approached her. A true champion, with nerves of steel.

"What is your name?" she asked. Her voice matched her demeanour: confident, composed, unshakable. She was shorter than me, but I felt my legs shaking just looking at her.

I pulled myself to together. Remember, this is just another kid forced into this, champion or not. "I'm Alex."

"Sam." Silence ensued.

I looked around. Championship matches were usually given a little more leeway on how long you could talk before the match and how soon after making eye contact one must call their first pokémon. Not enough to avoid the inevitable, but enough to delay it. "How many challengers have you had so far?"

"Two." Sam placed her hands in her belt. "No idea about how many champions there were before me, if that's what you're going to ask next." Fortunately, she didn't seem to be in any rush to get the battle started, either.

"Not bad," was all I could think of to say in response to that.

Sam quirked an eyebrow. "Indeed." She eyed the pokéball on my belt. "I assume you're no slouch either, to get this far with only a single pokémon. Did the others perish on the way here?"

"Nah." I wondered about how much time we had left. A rubber band can only be stretched so far, after all. "Ferra's all I've ever had."

"Are you kidding me? The hell kind of a starter did you draw?" Sam glared at me. "I started with a rattata. Do you have any idea how hard I had to struggle to survive?"

I lowered my head. "I can imagine."

"No, you can't." Sam kept glaring at me, then sighed. "Not that it matters at this point. What matters is that I'm here now. That we're both here now. Are you ready?"

I took a deep breath. "Honestly? I'm not."

I expected Sam to glare at me again. Instead, she just shrugged. "Not everyone is. Are we going to do this anyway?"

I looked at my feet. This was it. The true final step. Either Ferra would die, or Ferra and I would both die. If only there was a way I could ensure Ferra's survival, my own didn't matter all that much. Ferra was innocent. I was not.

An idea, a brief glimmer of hope, crossed my mind. I wouldn't necessarily work. But it might.

"Actually," I started, searching for words as I spoke, "I came here to make you an offering."

Sam's eyebrow rose. "I beg your pardon?"

I swallowed and unclipped Ferra's pokéball from my belt. I held it towards Sam with both hands, lowering my head. "This is Ferra. It's an aggron. I promise you it's well-trained, so please look after it."

Sam eyed the pokéball with suspicion. "Relinquishing your final pokémon is against the rules."

There it was, the potential kink in my plan. "Do you remember what the rules say about the consequences of it? I can't."

Sam stroked her chin. "The trainer is disqualified, obviously. And disqualified in the 'execution' way, not the 'better luck next time' way."

That I had already known. "But what happens to the pokémon?"

"Nothing. The offering itself is valid. The pokémon belongs to the trainer it was given to." Sam let her hand fall. "Are you still sure you're going to go through with it?"

I barely heard her words: as soon as I heard Ferra would be, my head was filled with warm, glowing light that briefly drowned out the real word. I forced myself out of it to reply. "More sure than ever. Will you allow it?"

Sam considered it for a moment before shrugging. "Gonna have blood on my hands regardless. Might as well."

"My blood won't be on your hands. I promise you," I said as I walked to her and offered Ferra to her again.

Gingerly, she took the pokéball and turned it around in her hand. "If you say so." She looked me in the eye. "I'll take good care of Ferra."

I nodded. I trusted her. "You really are the champion."

For a moment, Sam grinned. Then, her stoic expression returned. "They will come to get you soon."

"Don't worry, I'll be gone from here before that happens." I bowed at Sam, then left, only glancing back once when I had reached the stairs. Sam had summoned Ferra, and offered it her hand to examine. Ferra seemed to respond well. I couldn't help bit smile.

_Good luck, both of you._

I continued down the steps, my head held high, my heart uplifted.

I had given up my final pokémon. I had walked away from the champion after speaking to her. I was dead, the fact just hadn't caught up to me yet.

But Ferra was safe.

And I was free.


End file.
